Seeing Things as They Are
Nyanaponika Thera
© 2004. BuddhaNet edition ©
1996.
If we contemplate even a minute sector of life's
vast range, we are faced with a variety of living forms so
tremendous that it defies all description. Yet three basic features
can be discerned as common to everything that has animate
existence, from the microbe to man, from the simplest sensations to
the thoughts of a creative genius:
impermanence or change (anicca);
suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha);
non-self or insubstantiality (anatta).
These three basic facts were first found and
formulated over 2,500 years ago by the Buddha, who was rightly
called "the Knower of the World" (loka-vidu). They are designated, in
Buddhist terminology, the three
characteristics (ti-lakkhana) — the
invariable marks or signs of everything that springs into being,
the "signata" stamped upon the very face of life itself.
Of the three, the first and third apply directly to
inanimate existence as well as to the animate, for every concrete
entity by its very nature undergoes change and is devoid of
substance. The second feature, suffering, is of course only an
experience of the animate. But the Buddha applies the
characteristic of suffering to all conditioned things, in the sense
that, for living beings, everything conditioned is a potential
cause of experienced suffering and is at any rate incapable of
giving lasting satisfaction. Thus the three are truly universal
marks pertaining even to what is below or beyond our normal range
of perception.
The Buddha teaches that life can be correctly
understood only if these basic facts are understood. And this
understanding must take place, not only logically, but in
confrontation with one's own experience. Insight-wisdom, which is
the ultimate liberating factor in Buddhism, consists in just this
experiential understanding of the three characteristics as applied
to one's own bodily and mental processes, and deepened and matured
in meditation.
To see things as they really are means to see them
consistently in the light of the three characteristics. Not to see
them in this way, or to deceive oneself about their reality and
range of application, is the defining mark of ignorance, and
ignorance is by itself a potent cause of suffering, knitting the
net in which man is caught — the net of false hopes, of unrealistic
and harmful desires, of delusive ideologies and of perverted values
and aims.
Ignoring or distorting the three basic facts
ultimately leads only to frustration, disappointment and despair.
But if we learn to see through deceptive appearances, and discern
the three characteristics, this will yield immense benefits, both
in our daily life and in our spiritual striving. On the mundane
level, the clear comprehension of impermanence, suffering and
non-self will bring us a saner outlook on life. It will free us
from unrealistic expectations, bestow a courageous acceptance of
suffering and failure, and protect us against the lure of deluded
assumptions and beliefs. In our quest for the supramundane,
comprehension of the three characteristics will be indispensable.
The meditative experience of all phenomena as inseparable from the
three marks will loosen, and finally cut, the bonds binding us to
an existence falsely imagined to be lasting, pleasurable and
substantive. With growing clarity, all things internal and external
will be seen in their true nature: as constantly changing, as bound
up with suffering and as unsubstantial, without an eternal soul or
abiding essence. By seeing thus, detachment will grow, bringing
greater freedom from egoistic clinging and culminating in Nibbana,
mind's final liberation from suffering.